Marty Robbins

Marty Robbins (26 September 1925-8 December 1982) was an American country singer-songwriter, actor, and racecar driver. He was born in Glendale, Maricopa County, Arizona in 1925 to a white father and a Paiute mother, and he was one of 10 children. At the age of 17, he left his troubled home and his alcoholic father to serve in the US Navy, serving in the Solomon Islands during World War II. He came to love Hawaiian music and began to play guitar, and, after his discharge in 1947 and his marriage in 1948, he began to play at local venues in Phoenix and became a radio host. He was a member of the 1950s-1970s Nashville establishment of "cowboys" which would be replaced by denim-wearing "outlaws" during the 1970s, and he was known for his Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs album in 1959, which included his signature song "El Paso". In 1966, he went political with the song "Ain't I Right", which criticized "two-faced politicians", communism, socialism, the counterculture movement, and perhaps even the Civil Rights movement (by saying "there's even been a minister or two; a priest, a nun, a rabbi, and an educated man" supporting the communist movement). During the 1970s, he became a NASCAR driver, placing in the top ten in 6 races. He died in 1982 of complications from quadruple coronary bypass surgery.